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Not Celebrity's Best

Sail Date:
December 2012

Destination:
Eastern Caribbean

Embarkation:
Miami

We cruised on the 12/15 sailing of the Reflection. This is our fourth cruise with Celebrity, and probably the weakest. While the ship is new and nicely appointed, the "wow" features, like the hot glass studio on Solstice, are missing. An extra deck has been added, along with more passengers using the same number of elevators as the other Solstice class ships. This was a minor inconvenience to ambulatory passengers like us, but there were many scooter/wheelchair passengers who endured long waits. The lawn was mostly roped off on our sailing - I suppose for the use of those renting the "Alcoves".

We had the feeling that this ship is Celebrity's attempt to return to "Class" cruising, with special suites and more pay-to-dine restaurants. We felt somewhat uncomfortable with the amount of selling of "extras" on this cruise.

Overall, our cabin was very comfortable, the food in the Opus dining room and other venues was superb, the service level we experienced excellent. We More
had a wonderful waiter and bus boy for our late seating, and the cabin attendants were perfect. This did not seem to be the case around the ship, as I over-heard many passengers complaining about both. It's possible that, as a relatively newly launched ship, more training is in order for some staff.

The stop in San Juan was pointless. We arrived late, but had we even docked at the 3 PM scheduled arrival, it was too late to do much before dark. We shared the stops in St. Maarten and St. Thomas with several other large ships - these are probably the ports that can accommodate this size vessel. Unfortunately, St. Thomas was overrun with cruise passengers to the point of annoyance. A taxi ride from Coki Beach back to the ship took an hour and a half because of all the extra traffic. We'll look for cruises with fewer ships in port with us next time. Less